Partitioning Hard Drive for Dual-boot

Question

I have an inspiron E1505 that came with Win XP installed. I attempted to install Ubuntu 6 so I could dual boot. However, when I tried to manually partition the my disk (I only have 1), it said I could not create more than 4 partitions. Afterwards, I checked my Disk Manager and found that in addition to the 'C:' partition, I have 2 other unnamed partitions. These partitions are FAT and FAT32 file systems, with the FAT partition having a status of 'Healthy (EISA Config.)' and the FAT32 being 'Healthy (Unknown partition)'. Has anyone run into this problem? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

ant2ne · Answer

Yup, dell links primary partitions. You'll need to get rid of a primary to install another OS. Me, I just completely re did my entire hard drive. I gave it 3 primary partitions, and one Extended Partition with 4 logical partitions. Google 'SystemRescueCD' download the ISO and burn it to CD. It contains a great partition program called GParted.

floba · Answer

Have a look at this previous thread and my reply: 'http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=10273' floba Message Edited by floba on 08-04-2007 11:14 AM

GreyMack · Answer

Dell Diagnostics, Dell MediaDirect, and Dell PC Restore features are each bootable and independant of the Windows installation, and they each use separate partitions. Additionally, the latter two rely on MBR customizations, with all that implies.

When Ghost is pre-installed, there may also be a partition dedicated to storing those images. A partition guarded by a hard disk controller's HPA feature has been used for Dell MediaDirect in the past, but I believe that technique was discontinued before the E1505 model was released.

Dan Goodell offers a fairly comprehensive revelation of Dell's special features/partitioning. http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/index.htm http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm GM Edit: typo

GM

Message Edited by GreyMack on 08-04-2007 02:21 PM

huismann · Answer

Thanks to you guys, I think I have everything figured out. I'm running Ubuntu with no noticable problems, so thanks again!

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Partitioning Hard Drive for Dual-boot

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